Most Revolutionary - Chapter Twenty-Two
Iowa Bound
Previously: Secret Service Director William Kingsley questions Sabia Perez on the icy drive outside her farmhouse. In the great room beneath the farmhouse, Jenna Ryzcek tells Tucker Gere why he must remain hostage and why Sabia holds President Silver and Ellen Lin captive for social ransom. Trapped even farther underground in the coal mine survival bunker with the bound fugitive ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan, President Silver and Ellen Lin fight over what to do with Castelan. Silver rages at TV clips leaked to the media by Acting President Alecta O’Roura-Chavez in which Alecta threatens to replace Silver’s Cabinet and implement revolutionary change to social services, banking, public funding, and much more.
MOST REVOLUTIONARY - A SERIALIZED NOVEL
Her pickup truck weighted down for winter traction with sandbags in the bed, Sabia speeds north on the frozen farm road to her favorite Mexican restaurant in Des Moines. Secret Service Director William Kingsley, buckled in beside her, stares out at the sheets of white snow plastered on prairie and woodlands and frigid remote farms.
After he finds the big winter gloves on the truck seat that he does not know belong to Tucker Gere, Kingsley pries for information about Sabia’s friends or lovers, but Sabia reveals nothing. Kingsley glances again behind the seat to where Sabia threw the gloves.
“Your truck have an oil leak?” he asks.
“Probably. Why?”
“I thought I smelled motor oil in the drive by your house.”
Sabia thinks back a couple nights to when Roca and Jenna hauled cans of used motor oil from the barn to Tucker Gere's car before burning the empty vehicle through the ice of Rathbun Lake.
“It’s an old truck. We can’t afford electric. So gas and oil it is.” The truck engine seems louder now to Sabia than ever before.
“So that explains the oil on the snow shovel in back of your other truck?” says Kingsley.
Sabia takes her eyes off the road, for a moment, to consider Kingsley.
“You spying on me, Bill? You do a piss-poor job of it. Oil leaks. Old trucks crack and creak and leak. We’ll make it to Des Moines and back, don’t worry. No posh DC for you out here on the prairie, Big Guy.”
Kingsley stares into the winter wilds. “You skipped school today?”
“Lock me up and throw away the key, Director. I had a rough night or two.”
“Flashbacks? The bombing?”
“Something like that. A total nightmare.”
“Anyone you reach out to, Sabia, people will help you. We searched countless barns, basements, attics, outbuildings within a hundred miles of the blast. People are willing to help,” says Kingsley. “Resourceful people here in Iowa.”
Farms and forest flash by — bitter cold — austere, beautiful, deadly.
“Think of the people who lived here first,” says Sabia. “Now that’s resourceful. And what happened to them?” The truck hits a pothole. Sabia steadies herself with the steering wheel while Kingsley bounces and grabs the door handle. “That must have made you real popular, poking into other people’s homes and lands. It’s what you do, I guess. Go where you don’t belong.”
“Lots of people were more than glad to help, Sabia. Not necessarily you.”
“Definitely not me. But who helps the people? Too many folks around here don't have a pot to piss in. Others — they do okay and pretend that everyone else is good too.”
“It wasn’t me who made the world, Sabia. I wouldn’t design things this way. Not if it could be helped.”
“Oh, it can be helped — and then some. But only if we make it so. Not you though,” says Sabia. “You enforce the status quo — cops like you. You’re paid to.”
“I protect the President—”
“I know exactly what you do, Kingsley. You and President Silver. Establishment stars. Silver’s a modern-day slaver. She butchers the most vulnerable.”
“The system isn’t all bad, Sabia.”
“Shove it, Kingsley.” Sabia steers the truck into a pothole, jarring Kingsley much more than herself as she squeezes the wheel.
Director Kingsley scans the road for more bumps.
It’s time, he thinks. When else might Sabia be more confined than this, trapped in a speeding truck she cannot escape, caught in conversation she cannot avoid. “Tell me, Sabia — what did you think about President Silver at the end of the last hostage video? She held up the tennis ball and said her captors told her to do it. Wasn’t that odd? As if her captors were signaling to someone.”
Sure she was. Sabia stares straight ahead.
Kingsley got the message. How could he not? And Alecta surely too. The two officials who Sabia impressed with her tennis ball bright oranges and ripe lemons during their visits to her dugout greenhouse, her prairie walipini — her ever-living summer world that the Perez family built as if to spite winter in favor of tender life.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The better to live, the stronger to grow, the easier to strike out and strike back. Why not flaunt her epic secret to Kingsley and Alecta? Why not reveal, boast, taunt, and tease. And dare. Deniably. What could they do with no evidence? What could they know with no real situational awareness? How could they touch her? Sabia won. She captured Silver and Lin, and she holds them without flaw, or fear of detection. Sure, she got lucky. People get lucky in all sorts of things — love, money, genetics, geography, life. Crime. Revolution. You get lucky, you go with it. If you’re Sabia, you go hard.
The blindside arrival of fugitive FBI Director Maximilian Castelan with his bloodlust, and with his victim, Tucker Gere — that was bad luck. But Sabia, with Jenna and Roca, they handled it, best they could, and turned it from horrible to great. Doubled their hostage count. Burned Castelan’s car, stolen from Tucker, through ice and storm into the watery grave of Rathbun Lake. You need to work life to your advantage, good luck or bad. And now Sabia has brought Kingsley back with the tennis ball, into her reach, and it is time to work him too.
“It’s almost as if the captors were confessing,” says Kingsley. “Or boasting. A crazy admission.”
“It’s not my fault that you can’t find Silver and Lin.”
“Really?” says Kingsley. “Whose fault is it?”
The truck heater blasts, the tires hum, the engine growls.
“How should I know?”
“You agree with everything the kidnappers demand. Seems like you might have some insight into their mindset.”
“It’s crazy to kidnap the President,” says Sabia. “Everyone knows that.”
“Are you crazy?”
“You think so.”
“There is not a single one of those ransom demands that is irrational, Sabia. Extreme, yes, far-reaching, no doubt — outrageous and criminal — but not crazy.”
“That’s what you think. In reality, those demands are limited and modest, merely basic,” says Sabia.
“Not revolutionary?”
“It’s a revolutionary start. Good on the American Liberation Alliance. More power to them. Somebody needs to strike back against the savage officials and their cruel tyrannies of finance, their vampire corporations, their lapdog pets in government who unleash bloody bombs and deadly policies against people near and far.”
“You never let up.”
“Why should I? Why should anyone?”
“How much is enough, Sabia? Your expectations, your standards — they’re too high.”
“Says you.”
“No one will give in. No one will give up. No one will bend to you.”
“You don’t see my hand out, do you? You gotta force it, Kingsley. You win power for people by force.”
“I get you. That’s where the Acting President fits in, right? She’s in position to force things now. She legalized universal health care, reined in the military, stopped weapons shipments and sales, lifted sanctions, mandated countless policies to benefit workers, the poor, children, the elderly, parents, prisoners, the environment. Seems like something new each day.”
“She goddamn better. You know what’s really crazy, Bill? Most people here in Iowa, especially country folk, they voted against Alecta, against her ticket. Sure, Silver-Fucker, goddamn shill for the establishment, she was at the head of the ticket — repulsive and bloody as Hell — but not as bad as her Republican opponent, amazingly. Meanwhile, Alecta’s positions are all good — as far as they go. As long as she keeps moving forward every single day. That’s the whole fucking job of the President. You’re not supposed to be a stooge for Big Money. You’re not supposed to kill left and right. You are supposed to help people, nonstop. So is that what Presidents do? Hell, no. They toss peanuts to the People and load up the rich with ever more money and power. They blast and bleed whoever they want for more might, more bucks. Thank the kidnappers now. They’re the ones who actually forced universal health care, military pullback, and all the rest. Thank the American Liberation Alliance. Thank the fucking Revolution. It’s a start. What else will save people and the planet and all the creatures on it? You need the government to work for the people otherwise the predators of the establishment buy the government and kill for money, forever. And the anti-government people, the so-called Libertarians, they’re killers too — even when they think they're the right hand of fucking God. Especially then. They like to let corporations and banks run wild and barbaric. You gotta show people shit can be done — for the public. For the people. By actually doing good things for the people and the world. Thank the ALA first and President Alecta second. Sometimes you gotta do shit yourself. Like almost all the time. You need to become the power that needs to be.”
“I can’t condone it, Sabia. The rules exist for a reason.”
“Subjugation. That’s the reason. No one cares what you think, Kingsley.”
“A call to war then — you’re talking about war. Civil war. Kidnapping. Ransom. Hostages.”
“We are all hostages, Kingsley. Long since. It’s time to free ourselves.”
“A fight you can’t win.”
“Oh, we’re winning. When we fight, we win. The Resistance. The kidnappers are saving the fucking world. The establishment is outlaw. Fundamentally. The kidnappers are outlaw in a trivial sense. Thank your lucky stars that Acting President Alecta is along for the ride. Otherwise, who knows what shit would go down. These are end-planet days. Silver-Fucker and you would rather see everything burn. Silver burns us to the ground slower than the right-wingers — but to the same ashes in the end.”
“It's wrong, Sabia. Kidnapping is kidnapping. What if someone tried to kidnap you?”
“I would fucking break their face.” Sabia thinks back to Roca blasting Castelan in the shoulder with the shotgun she got from Avery. “Or my allies would.”
“America has a monopoly on force, Sabia. No revolution can withstand it. Blackmailing and extorting the state, come on, no resistance could ever—”
“Saving. Liberating. Defending. Strengthening. You fascist, Kingsley. Modern day fascists — that’s the establishment already — they use laws and money to burn it all to profit — bigoted profiteering, extractive of blood and money. Fascists don't care about the law — they care about fascism — tyranny of their dollar — big money with its boot on the neck of poor blacks and browns and whites. Stomped hard, the most vulnerable — the young, the old, the imprisoned, minorities, the impoverished, the neo-slaves drained of their time and money and health and sanity — they get hit the worst. Whoever controls the money, whoever owns the money, if it’s a only a few, if it’s an oligarchy, a plutocracy, if it’s only the One Percent, or the One Tenth of One Percent — it’s fucking fascist. And you’re a protector of the fascists, Kingsley. The fascists are already here. Like right here in my fucking truck. You’re everywhere.”
“So I’m the enemy.”
“Armed with a gun, aren’t you? You’re not armed to protect me. Like you said — the state has a monopoly on force. Atomic bombs. Countless weapons that should be banned, not multiplied.”
“Sabia, anyway you slice it — despite everything else — the kidnappers are criminals and they will be treated—”
“Like terrorists. But you’re the goddamned criminal, Kingsley. You and the white supremacist corporate tyrant courts and the Congress of the rich that throw up blockades to Alecta's popular changes, badly needed. It’s point-blank corrupt to be a pillaging owner. Those are the criminals. Those are the kidnappers for real. Those are the terrorists. Congress is captive to big donors who bleed people every day. What is government in a plutocracy? A fraud. Fake populists and profiteering professionals bought by the rich, to serve the rich, for the rich, at the expense of people and the planet. At the expense of people and plants. Plutocracy is mass kidnapping. The ALA merely fights fire with fire. There’s a right to self defense — to the defense of human rights. That’s the ALA. America is an occupied country, on an occupied planet, multiple times over, and you're a fucking overseer of the occupied. You’re for the occupiers, for the biggest and bloodiest colonizers of all.”
“Sabia. Everything about this country is not criminal like you make it out to be.”
“You’re brainwashed, Bill. That’s your whole problem. But I grant you a couple things. It’s true — there’s great free speech rights in America — compared to other countries — though those rights are always under attack by the rich. The massive wealth of this country is used to crush and drown people’s voices.” Sabia looks like she wants to spit over the steering wheel. “And I’ll give you one more, Kingsley — women — they have more rights in America than in most countries — at least women with money. But poverty, sickness, pollution, wage bondage — shit like that undercuts every right imaginable. No — the ALA kidnappers are not criminals. But you may be a brain-damaged moron, Kingsley. The ALA are the People’s Kidnappers. The American Liberation Alliance, they are fucking heroes.”
Kingsley examines the little kidnapper — possible kidnapper — working the steering wheel beside him. Her foot — winter boot — hard on the gas. Eyes relentlessly forward. True, he cannot prove anything, but how can he not think of Sabia as the ALA incarnate, the Kidnapper-in-Chief?
Sabia imprisoned — eventually — he finds it hard to imagine, and repugnant, and easy to see coming to be. He wonders if she will go out in a brutal blaze instead. Or maybe a blast from a Gray Eagle Army drone. He can believe that as much as anything. Sabia firing a pathetic farm gun up at the death monster of the sky in the moment of her obliteration.
“Sabia, be warned. The ALA has declared war on the country. And that makes them — what — in the eyes of the state? Terrorists. Like you said.”
Like Jenna? Sabia thinks. Like Jasmine? Terrorists for burning pipes to save the planet.
“Look who’s talking,” she says.
“You think I’m a terrorist?”
“Are you carrying a gun right now, Bill?”
“Sure. It’s my job.”
“See — I’m not. Funny how that works. Who’s the terrorist, Bill? The official terrorist.”
“I’m in the field, Sabia. I need a gun.” Granted it was not much of a gun, a Glock 26 — a “baby Glock” — weighing little more than a pound, strapped inside his left ankle. Still, it would put a nine millimeter hole in you and kill you quick. “I’m a potential target wherever I go, Sabia.”
“I wonder why. You’re hunting enemies really. That’s right. Mainly — get real, Kingsley — you aren’t the target. You target.”
Kingsley fixates on the dormant frozen land, sprawling for miles. What is it about people who live in the wilds who come up with crazy ideas of reality and insane notions of resistance? What is it about the wide open spaces that makes them act the way they do? The disturbing thing, Kingsley knows, there’s even more of this kind of thinking and resistance in the cities than in the countryside. Maybe because the mind is wider than the sky, and in the cities there are more people, more minds busting out beyond the limits of the sky, in the cities, and online.
“The ALA” — Sabia declares — “the ALA is finally defending the people of this country and the world from the age-old attack of the rich against the impoverished. Why do you think the ALA is so popular? Because people are under attack. People are angry. People are all populists now — it’s good versus Evil — the people are led by pseudo populists like Con Don Trump or progressive Populists like Bernie Sanders and Alecta O’Roura-Chavez. The people need revolutionaries to defend them and to advocate for them. You hear me, Big Man?”
Sabia tightens her grip on the steering wheel. Her speed, she holds steady.
“The establishment is absolutely predatory. There’s one party, with two factions. One cycle, fake populists beat fake progressives — the next cycle it’s the opposite — and on and on — the pattern of many decades. The one party state of America may seem to flip-flop but actually merely oscillates between these two fake options in a thug Empire. There’s great stability for the one-tenth of one percent in this oscillation, Kingsley. Meanwhile the American Empire, the cops and the hired professionals, they beat back the real progressive populists. You know it’s true. In electoral realms in America there’s a progressive line that runs for more than a century from Eugene Debs — an antiwar working man’s socialist — to the New Dealer FDR, to the humans rights crusader Martin Luther King, to the all-around progressive Jesse Jackson, and to Bernie Sanders, and now to Alecta O’Roura-Chavez, and to many others. No fake progressives there. Not at their best. They better not be. AOC is a progressive populist who fights the predatory establishment. She’s Robin Hood — simply put. She’s the ALA in office. The ALA knows how to create wealth, and how to take back what is stolen, and how to put it where it belongs. The ALA at the grassroots needs Alecta. And Alecta needs the everyone. You gotta get the money and the resources and the services, the life of the country, to the people who need it and can use it.”
“Clever kidnapping, noble kidnapping, Robin Hood kidnapping, it’s all kidnapping, Sabia. And the cops are king and they will hang the kidnappers. I’m telling you.”
“Well, fuck the King, Bill. You’re horrible. You’re a cop. You’re so fucking brainwashed it’s painful to hear.”
“I’m a realist.”
“The ALA is more realist than you. By far. The ALA — what is it but a great act of love — that’s what the ransom demands are. That’s what the ALA creates. Great love. The defense of human rights.”
“Tell it to President Silver and Ellen Lin. And to their loved ones. Where are their human rights?”
“You’re on the wrong side of history, Bill. Wrong side of the stormfront. You need to come in from the cold. See — everything your brain tells you, try to think the opposite. You can learn that way. Cut against your conditioning and you’ll be a lot more human.”
“Sabia — pothole! Lookout!—”
Sabia swerves deftly toward the jagged pothole, pops the edge of it on Kingsley’s side. The truck bucks. Kingsley grabs the dash and door.
“You did that on purpose.”
Sabia tilts her head, her eyes fixed on the hard road, her hands steady and even, voice calm.
“Don’t be scared, Bill. I’m an excellent driver.”
In the coal mine survival bunker, President Silver and Ellen Lin adjust the duct tape binding the ankles of fugitive ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan so that he is able to take tiny steps, inches at a time. Likewise, they free his hands but tighten the rope and tape that pin his arms above his elbows to his side. He looks ridiculous. He can barely reach his hands to his mouth to eat, and to his waist to relieve himself when necessary.
Castelan remains a threat. Silver and Lin cannot risk freeing him.
Castelan makes his way slowly to the bathroom. He's a miserable wretch and he looks it. Awkward in effort, he pulls shut the bathroom door. He looks in the mirror above the sink. Fuck. Charcoal under his eyes. Skin paler than ever. He looks like like a ghoul from the netherworld.
Trapped in a coal mine bunker. But the mine is refuge too, given what Castelan has done, who he has been, what he has become. And the mine is a power center now — how can it not be. He’s there with the would-be leader of America, President Silver. He needs to get close to Silver, closer than ever before, as close as she as she might allow — or be forced.
President Silver speaks privately with Ellen Lin in the kitchen. Silver runs water in the kitchen sink so as not to be heard by Castelan. She and Lin huddle at the table over tea and coffee and speak in a hush.
“As long as Sabia plays it like we’re legit hostages, we're okay,” says Silver.
“We’re at Sabia’s mercy, Kristen. We’re not getting out of this cave any time soon. Not unless the FBI tracked Castelan to the farmhouse. And maybe not even then.”
“The thing is — we can’t let Castelan know we were once free and chose to remain hostage for sake of the polls and the election.”
“Sabia will tell him. You watch. To spite us.”
“So we deny it. Paint Sabia as vengeful and crazy.”
“No stretch there.”
“Exactly. Keep Castelan clueless about everything so that when it’s all over, I burn him to the ground, easy. He deserves to burn, Ellen.”
“No shit. Just be practical. Don’t be like Sabia, whatever you do.”
“Please. You and me, we’re nothing like Sabia. I’m no criminal.”
“Let’s remember that. And let’s keep it that way.”
In the bathroom, Castelan finds a glass cup on the sink and presses his ear to the bottom of the cup with the rim to the door. He hears only running water and a bit of muffled conversation.
He gives up spying and relieves himself as quickly as he can. He washes his hands and surveys the bathroom. Can’t reach for much. Tries to saw through the duct tape that binds his arms by rubbing against the towel rack and the edge of the sink. Finally an edge of the cabinet door cuts through part of the tape.
“You okay in there!” shouts Silver.
Castelan almost falls into the shower.
“Be right out!”
Castelan gives up on the binds for now and examines his shoulder in the mirror. He can't see anything through his shirt and the bandage, no blood. He's not too worried. No fever. The shotgun pellets either cleared his shoulder bones or merely bruised, maybe cut, he assumes. His shoulder aches, it’s so stiff, but hopefully not infected. He was fortunate to be unconscious when Jenna removed the pellets. Lucky to have her as a nurse for captor. It’s not too late for things to break his way, he thinks. He found the President after all. He can take advantage of nurse Jenna at some point. Feign illness and injury, solicit help, then attack.
Castlen opens the bathroom door. President Silver stands there pointing a large knife at him.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she says. She holds the knife to his chest, pokes through his shirt. Then with the dull edge, Silver prods the duct tape around his arms to see if still taut. Castelan turns away from the knife to hide the torn back of the binding. “Bring me the rope, Ellen.”
“Gladly.” Lin retrieves a hemp rope from the kitchen closet. Silver drapes it around Castelan’s neck, then leashes him like a dog. She ties tight knots.
Castelan shuffles into the kitchen and sits on a chair at the table. Silver loops the rope through the wooden spindles of the chair back and ties it to a table leg.
“Can’t be too careful with our Top Cop, can we, Max? You always needed a couple extra watchdogs on you that you never got.”
Lin sets a glass of water in front of Castelan. “It’s not poisoned, I promise,” she says. Castelan considers. He drinks. “Binding you up is barbaric,” says Lin. “But for you — necessary.”
“He can't be trusted,” says Silver. “Only tamed.”
“Ladies — listen — I will help you escape, if you help me. If you pardon me.”
“Oh, we’re ‘ladies’, are we? And here I thought I was the President of the United States of America. But, no, to you, Max, I’m a meek and demur, polite little old lady — the better to be manipulated and controlled.”
“I apologize.”
“You do.”
Lin scoffs. “Your President might let you select your preferred form of execution, Max,” says Lin. “If you’re lucky. That's about all the help you can expect from her.”
“Ma’am. Madame President, what I mean—”
“You can’t help us now, Max,” says Silver. “If by some miracle you could, maybe I could get you a reduced sentence, at best. But what good are you to me anymore? You’re a traitor. And you were kidnapped by a girl.”
“So were you, Madame President. And here we are.”
“But you’re a cop, Max, and I’m not. You’re a bad cop. Ellen and I, we are supposed to be protected by you cops.”
“So much for that utter fantasy,” says Lin.
“If you really can help me now, Max, I won’t forget,” says Silver. “But don't endanger us by thinking of escape. And don't try to hurt us ever again. You will be a good boy, now. And I will ensure it.”
“He’s a mass murderer,” says Lin. “He should get nothing from us, ever.”
“Alleged mass murderer,” says Silver. “You never know whose help I might need going forward, Ellen. Let’s be practical.”
“Exactly,” says Castelan. “I can get you both out of this hole. These people are amateurs.”
“Oh, really?” says Lin. “They seem more than capable to me.”
“It was the element of surprise only — nothing more,” says Castelan. “We know who they are now. So now, we surprise them.”
“Do the words 'coal mine survival bunker' mean anything to you, Maximilian?You’ve dug yourself into a deep hole — far, far below the ground,” says Silver. “You won’t jimmy your way out of here. Sabia buried you. She buried me and Ellen. Deal with it. I have to.”
“There’s no way out,” says Lin. “We tried. Death might do it, but the President intends to return to power stronger than ever.”
“Rescue from the outside is our only hope,” says Silver.
“No, you need to trick them,” says Castelan. “Or hammer them. You both could have charged Roca when they brought me in here. Run him over, he's old.”
“And get shot. Or shocked. Look what they did to you.” President Silver reaches across the corner of the table and pokes Castelan’s wounded shoulder. He pulls back, grits his teeth.
“Do not touch me,” he says.
Silver pokes him again. “Careful, Max. Do you remember Ellen’s face in the first ransom video? Roca did that. Beat her black and blue and bloody.”
“Kristen,” says Ellen. “That wasn’t Roca. I — well — I fell.”
“You fell? On what? Somebody’s fist?” says Castelan. “Everyone assumed you were injured by the blast or got beaten up. So the truth isn’t always what appears, right? The truth is not what it’s always said to be. People say terrible things about me, and there’s no reason to believe a word of it.”
“Shut up, Max,” says President Silver. “You put a tracker on my campaign bus. Then it was bombed.”
“It’s not what it appears, Madame President. I can’t be that bad. You kept me on from the previous administration. No one forced you.”
“You tried to kill me, Max.”
“I was framed. I’m telling you. I killed no one. I mean, no one is a saint, President Silver. No one. Tell me this — what’s with you polls going sky high now that you’re hostage? You benefit from all this. Big time. You need these polls, Ma’am. You need to be held hostage. Don't you. Maybe you don’t want to escape after all. Maybe you bombed yourself.”
“You fucking murderer,” says Lin.
“You put me in here, Max,” says Silver. “You and Sabia. You two are terrible.”
“Or do you need this special calamity, this first-of-its-kind crisis to win re-election. You do. Better hope you don’t get out too soon.”
“Oh, fuck you,” says Lin.
“None of it this was ever in my control,” says Silver.
Lin takes her cup of tea and sips it. She holds the cup for an extended moment, before setting it back on the table.
Then Lin stands up and looks down at Castelan — if not by much — small woman to large man. “What kind of sicko tracks the President’s campaign bus and shoots missiles at defenseless people?” says Lin. “What kind of man, what kind of creature do you think you are?”
“Innocent until proven guilty,” says Castelan. “Spare my life, Madame President, and I’ll get you out. Give me minimum security. Promise me that, and you and I, we walk right out of here.”
Silver and Lin exchange a glance.
“You won’t try to kill us again?” says President Silver.
“It was a frame job!”
Silver shakes her head. Lin scowls.
“Sure, Max. You do right by me, and I’ll do right by you.”
“I need something more specific, Madame President. No worse than minimum security, in exchange for my help with your freedom.”
“Isn’t he marvelous, Kristen?” says Lin. “The Devil wants a deal.”
Silver lifts her coffee to her lips and checks if still warm. She drinks anyway. Then she pushes the cup across the table. “He makes a fair point, Ellen. How does this end for certain if we don’t get ourselves out of here on our own?”
“No way,” says Lin. “Only his bondage protects us. He can’t be trusted for anything.”
Silver stands and adjusts the rope around Castelan’s neck. Tightens it.
“Can you be trusted, Max?”
“My life is your hands, Madame President.”
“No, we don’t trust you. We will, however, work with you. The way of the world.”
“Kristen, stop it. We will not,” says Lin. “I will not.”
President Silver tugs on the rope. Castelan sways at the neck. Silver leans in. “Tell me, Max. Why did House Speaker Barry Bombarill want to kill me and Alecta to become President? Why not simply run for office in four years?”
“Because his popularity is for shit,” says Lin. “And there he sits, third in line. So close, so far. He was tempted. He’s so fucking corrupt.”
Castelan strains at his bonds and the rope around his neck. He turns away from them both.
Lin reaches out and tugs the rope, yanking Castelan’s neck and head toward her. “The Devil cuts deals with coup plotters but he won’t come clean with us, not even to save his own life. Unfuckingbelievable.”
Castelan tries to twist from the pull of the rope on his neck.
“You motherfucker,” says Lin.
Lin jerks the rope and pulls Castelan's face close to hers. She spits in his eye. “That’s for everyone you killed on Ground Force One. That’s for the President’s staff, our colleagues, our friends.”
Lin puts the heel of her hand to his forehead and pushes him back. He resists, head-butting her hand. She punches him in his right eye — her knuckles flame with pain. She hides her discomfort and walks away.
President Silver gets up and moves close to Castelan. She raises her hand to his face. He flinches but she strokes, gently, his cheek and forehead. Then she squeezes the back his neck.
“I think you’ll work with us now, Max,” says Silver.
She massages his neck. She pushes and pulls the back of his neck so that his head bobs up and down as if to say, Yes. Yes, I will. Yes, I will do whatever my president commands from now on. No matter what.
Silver eases her grip, ever more gentle now. She slides her hand to his upper back. “Am I right about that, Max? Will you do as I command?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I will.”
“That’s a good boy, Max,” says Silver. “Isn’t he a good boy, Ellen?”
Lin runs cold water on her knuckles at the sink and tries to flex away the pain.
In the restaurant in Des Moines after the contentious trip from the farmhouse, Sabia sits with Kingsley at a small table in a corner of the main room. They dig into two platters of migas.
“Migas,” says Kingsley. “Never knew. This is great.”
“It’s the bomb,” says Sabia. “I get it every time. You’re buying.”
“For you, Sabia, anything.”
“What are you doing here, Kingsley?”
“You invited me.”
“In Iowa.”
“You know why I’m here, Sabia.”
“Can’t get enough failure? You’ll never find Silver. Or Castelan.”
“What do you know that I don’t, Sabia?”
“Everything.”
“That a fact?”
“Pretty much.”
“Okay.”
Sabia pays all attention to her food. Kingsley eats too and watches her.
“You said Castelan will hunt me up, Bill. So why not protect my home? Catch him before he does me any harm.”
“That’s not what you wanted. Remember? The Acting President said she would think about it when I made a request for guards. It’s not my place to—”
“Alecta would protect me. If she knew. You wouldn’t. I bet you want Castelan to show up and do your work for you. You don’t care what happens to me. You would rather see me dead if it advanced your career. Or saved it.”
“If you say the word, Sabia, the Alecta will put guards on your farmhouse anytime you want.”
“No guards.”
“There it is. I advised her. She refused. Your hero.”
Sabia digs into her food. “Alecta loves me.”
“She's a professional, Sabia. That means she's on her own side. In politics — and in life, in general — everyone’s on their own side. Ask my ex. It’s a cliche, I know, but my wife and I were together for years and then—”
“Fuck you and fuck your ex, Kingsley. What did you do to her? Send her out into a blizzard?”
Kingsley pokes at his plate. “That’s very funny.”
“Didn’t go well for President Silver when you shipped her into the snow, did it. Total luck that Alecta puked up her dinner and missed the bus.”
“Sabia. Alecta can’t think of every last thing is what I’m saying. She’s responsible for the entire government now. If you want guards—”
“No guards. And Alecta better make time for me. I'm her biggest ally. I rally the people. You see my videos. No one pushes the demands like I do.”
“DC is a long way from Iowa. What happens in Iowa doesn't much affect what happens in DC.”
“Do you even hear yourself, Kingsley? President Silver was nearly killed in Iowa. She was disappeared in Iowa. Seems like what happens in Iowa is the one thing that matters the most to the nation today.”
Kingsley spears a cubed browned bit of potato. He points it at Sabia. “Look—”
Sabia points her own fork at Kingsley. “I have big problems myself, Pal. Billy the Moto Kid, for one. That fucker keeps hounding me. When we stop at Yonkin’s today, I’ll get some eggs from his mom. And Ms. Yonkin and I will talk. I need someone to fuck Billy, and it might need to be his own mother.” Sabia chews methodically and watches for the reaction of the Secret Service Director. “It’s a sick world, Kingsley.”
“It certainly is.”
“You’ll be the last to know how truly sick it is.”
“Look, Sabia. Take care of yourself. Castelan may try to make contact.”
“Brilliant,” says Sabia. “If that thug ever shows up at my place — that will be the end of Castelan. I guarantee it.”
Kingsley leans forward.
“Sabia, tell me — you know where President Silver is, don’t you? I think Castelan knows too? Where is she? Who has her? You?”
Sabia pushes back from the table. “You're so stupid, Director. You're like a flea, like a little tiny mosquito, you're a bullshit horsefly, a pissant gnat. Someone needs to swat you down. You intimidate, you lie, you bully, you fear-monger. You good-cop and you bad-cop, all in one. Who falls for that shit?”
“You're the one pushing the bullshit all the way across the table, Sabia, as far as I can tell.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you. By the way, you will never see Maximilian Castelan ever again. Not this side of freedom.”
Kingsley leans slowly back in his chair. He marvels at the absolute authority by which Sabia makes the claim. “Meaning what? You can’t possibly— How can you possibly know where Castelan might be?”
Sabia smiles, surprising even herself.
She feels good, almost happy. She nods. “Something I heard,” she says.
Sabia digs into her plate of migas like there’s no tomorrow, like it’s the last and best food on the planet.
Kingsley can appreciate Sabia’s open contempt for his official capacity. No need to guess where he stands with her. At all.
He studies his plate. It really is good — the black beans and the eggs with the tortilla bits scrambled in. The browned diced potatoes, the cheese that ties it all together and the ranchero sauce, the chunky salsa on the side. Sabia knows tasty food, at least. And what else?
Kingsley glances around the diner. The customers — Kingsley profiles college kids and truck drivers, house painters and office workers, a hipster, a professor, a lawyer — or so they might be — even a cop like himself. Seemingly every ethnicity, thanks to the college town in the white state. An unusually popular kind of eatery almost always crowded or over-crowded. Kingsley imagines the restaurant as a place of neutrality and respite in the day-to-day rush and bang of life.
He can’t help think that fugitive ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan is somewhere nearby spying on them all. In the kitchen maybe, in the parking lot, or wired into the walls. In the waves of knowing that run through the air itself.
“Sabia, tell me. I let you stay in your farmhouse after the bombing. You know I did. Tell me what you know about Castelan, in Iowa, for real?”
“I don’t owe you anything, Kingsley.”
It’s too true.
Kingsley works again at his big plate of migas. He want to get a couple dozen eggs with Sabia at the Yonkin family farm. Travel a bit more in her truck that leaks oil onto snow shovels mid-winter. An old truck that holds a mysterious pair of gloves that Sabia threw behind the seat in an uncharacteristic rush, if not panic.
More than anything though, there is something odd, something off, something unusual about the day here in Iowa. Secret Service Director William Kingsley begins to think he will need to get to know this land a little more than he might otherwise like, before all is said and through. Before order is restored. Before he can return home to his empty house and to his broken job. The job he broke by sending the President of the United States of America into a blizzard in the middle of Iowa, very near the home of his pugnacious dinner companion, Sabia Perez, this young woman who maybe let slip that fugitive ex-FBI Director Maximilian Castelan is a fugitive no more.
It seems impossible to believe.
Sabia looks up Kingsley, and she seems so happy and is still smiling, and she never looks this way, not around him, and suddenly Kingsley thinks that Sabia is more powerful, at least in her own mind, than ever, and maybe more powerful in reality too than he knew. Or could maybe ever know.
Shit, Kingsley thinks. He cleans his plate. He wonders how many more potholes Sabia will seek out — just to bounce him hard — on the way back to the farm.
